S.O.S.

by Joseph Connolly

  ‘Stewart’s my name,’ yodelled happily the blond and orange man before her. ‘Assistant Cruise Director – yeah? So. Having fun? Yes? Aha! Just look who’s coming: more lovely people having fun!’

  And well before Jennifer could even begin to put her mind to whether to curse or flee from all this, Nobby and Aggie were suddenly there, and quite horrible.

  ‘Who’s a stranger …?’ cooed Aggie in mock admonishment, one finger wagging.

  ‘We missed you at luncheon,’ tacked on Nobby. ‘Missed you – yes indeed.’

  Jennifer gazed in wonder at these people. I have roundly insulted each one of them in turn – quite forcefully, I thought (not the works, admittedly – but enough, I should have said, for them to have at least received the subtext, here: but not, apparently). Oh God. It’s like those horror films – it’s just like those horror films, and now I am in one: when the oozing ogre is finally chopped and spattered, a claw flung over there amid signs of a clumsy decapitation, the walls hung at random and liberally with dripping portions of ghoulish giblets – and just when the quiveringly exhausted intended victim is slumping down into a wet and dress-ripped if fevered relief, all the bits start squelchingly regrouping into a we’ve-been-here-before coalescence and then suddenly the murderous and sag-tongued leer is back in place – and Jesus, off we bloodily go again. It’s funny, and not a little annoying, thought Jennifer now, how ill-prepared one always finds oneself; I mean to say, had I just thought to bring with me a fucking great bazooka, I could blast all of them to hell and pieces (but then they would, wouldn’t they? Gang up and reform).

  ‘I’ve got to, um – ’ she said (and made to).

  ‘Nice jacket,’ said Nobby. Quite simply. And yes – no one here could maybe quite have put their fingers on precisely why, but everyone turned towards him, and then just looked (and none more pointedly than Aggie).

  ‘So anyway,’ insisted Jennifer, ‘like I say – I really must – ’ (and this time she did).

  ‘Have fun!’ Stewart called after her. ‘Have fun! Have fun!’

  His seemingly limitless compulsion for saying and saying this could easily have eaten deeply into all their afternoons; maybe just as well, then, that Aggie now had something to say:

  ‘You never, Nobby – say that about my jacket. My clothes. Do you, Nobby?’

  ‘Don’t I, love?’

  Stewart had been on, hey – how many cruises, now? He well knew the time to duck and recede.

  ‘See you good people!’ was his parting shot; and quite a wave went with it. Does anyone, it suddenly struck him, actually ever hear a bloody word I say?

  Aggie was maybe regarding his practised stroll. ‘Not ever, far as I can recall …’ she said, quite lightly.

  Nobby resumed his usual and rather cocky expression: slapped her matily across the shoulders (which she normally, she supposed, quite liked, although it did tend to make her cough).

  ‘That’s all my eye and Betty Martin! Let’s get ourselves up top, Aggie love.’

  Aggie was temporarily distracted. She arrested their ambling by clutching at Nobby’s sleeve: her eyes were wide as she took her lips just one more time through the final rehearsal.

  ‘Oh Mihi Beate …?’

  Nobby was nodding his encouragement, his yolky eyes egging her on.

  ‘Good girl, good girl … And …?’

  ‘Oh Mihi Beate … Martine!’ she rounded off in triumph.

  ‘Ay-one, Captain Honeybunch. Ace. Quite right – quite right. Bless me Saint Martin – in …?’

  ‘Portuguese. Portuguese – yes Nobby? Not Spanish, is it?’

  ‘In point of fact Latin, my love, though wholly the province of Portuguese mariners. And the nearest our boys in blue could get to it was, heh heh – All My Eye And Betty Martin. Dear oh Lord. Up to the boat deck – yes, Aggie? Up for it? Don’t quite know how it came to mean moonshine …’

  Aggie nodded, and they wended their way.

  ‘But …’ she persisted, as Nobby heaved open the heavy door that led out to all that sweet and roaring air. ‘You don’t ever – do you, Nobby?’

  ‘I don’t what, love? Ooh it’s a fine, fine summer afternoon, Aggie. They should make her up to thirty-five knots today, all right. No trouble at all.’

  ‘ … Say I look nice, or anything. Mention something I’m wearing, or something. You never ever do, you know, Nobby. Not once ever.’

  ‘Don’t I, love? Well I’ll make up for all that right this very minute. You look corking, my admiral. There. How’s that?’

  And yes – Aggie conceded: her fondly collapsed face was now all indulgence. ‘Oh Nobby …’ she went. And then she linked one of her arms with his, as they bent themselves into the cold rush of wind and marched together towards the prow.

  And Nobby was thinking Well, love – I’ll tell you this for Harry Freemans: if I don’t ever rabbit on about any of your gear, well then it must be because, well – you dress exactly the same as I do, don’t you love? Practical. Weatherproof. Warm. Muted colours – quite right: don’t want to frighten the horses. And anyway – you asking for the truth, I wasn’t really thinking that Jennifer’s jacket was nice or not nice; all I was was just registering a fact: aye aye, I thought – I know this jacket, don’t I? This jacket of hers – I’ve seen it before.

  *

  Well at least Charlene and I can agree on that: some sort of a communion, I suppose. Tea, now, is long done with (and I must say, thought Nicole, I do rather approve of the way they arrange it all: those lovely silver tiered things – I’ve got one at home – with nicely trimmed sandwiches and not-too-big cakes: very good) and now the chat has turned to the fact that although it was perfectly clear from reading the thing, that little sort of newspaper thing they pop under your door at, God – must be dawn, or something; what do they call it, actually? Hang on – I’ve actually got one here, somewhere … now where on earth? Oh God, don’t please say I left it in the Fendi handbag, did I? Because I nearly, very nearly did go for the blue and white ensemble (not quite Chanel, but few would know) before thinking Hm: blue and white – suitable, yes (very sailor suit and all the rest of it), but not quite, Nicole, is it, up to your usual standards of imagination? The aim is always, surely, to be of course wearing something utterly suitable (mainly, I suppose, in order to demonstrate not just one’s easy adaptability to any given social situation, but also to make it perfectly plain that one is wholly aware of just what is and isn’t, well – utterly suitable, as I say) but then to go just that little bit further and invest it with just some wee something of a twist, you know? I mean, it could be anything, really: scarf, most obviously – but in a possibly Pucci print and apparently clashing colours, but when you look again, not. Merely (merely!) a rather unexpected and often thrilling juxtaposition – the sort of thing that women who are committed to to, oh God – outfits could scarcely imagine, and never achieve.

  But blue and white, well – blue and white really just has to be blue and white (mix in something else and you run the danger of appearing as if draped in a flag like an Olympic medallist or a Magaluf drunkard) and so at the very last minute – and yes I know, I’m simply awful like that (just ask David) – I decided to be shot of the lot and instead I elected to hurriedly slip into this rather splendid just-off mustard shirt dress, which you might not think would team at all well with both primrose and sunflower (and yes I can well see how many might demur) but if you very cleverly but subtly pull it all together, as I have done, with no more than a delineation of black (there must be no hint of wasp here, you understand), then what you end up with is a very chic but at the same time quite surprising whole – and one that I can see has gone down very well indeed with not just friend Charlene (she whooped at me a selection of frankly cowboy and maybe mobster noises, but the general impression I gather is highly favourable) – but also with the two other women, here: Julie, who is some sort of New York pal of Charlene’s (very old, but vaguely comprehensible), and this Pat person (English, thank the Lord �
�� if a little heavy in the make-up department). Seems very nice, on what little I have to go on, but she is, poor thing, feeling just a teeny weeny little bit under the weather – more or less the first thing she had to say to us (which I must say I did think a little off). So anyway – and this is my point here, as it were – what with that eleventh-hour change of direction on the appearance front, it is perfectly possible that the Daily Programme (yes, that’s what they call it – that sort of newspaper thing they put under your door) is still neatly folded in one of the zipped-up divisions in the Fendi bag, because for all my rummaging, I surely can’t find a trace of it in here. Anyway, just before Julie and Pat rolled along, Charlene and I were agreeing (and it’s rather a pleasant experience to agree with Charlene – well, let’s be plain here: fond though I have become of her, it’s quite rare that I even comprehend the noises her mouth is so forcefully emitting, so actual correspondence is highly refreshing) … yes, we were both agreeing, Charlene and I, that although the powers that be have seen to it that something – and very often all sorts of different and clashing things, if I’m being fair to them – is happening somewhere during every single waking moment (and even later than that, if you could bring yourself to stomach a sort of pub affair – David country – or something called the Regatta Club, which sounds unspeakable) … yes, well – we were each of us agreeing, Charlene and I, that although all that is doubtless true, there never seems to be anything one actually if one is honest wants to attend: partake in: witness. You see? I mean look – have a glance at all the things I haven’t done today (and it’s quite remarkable, you know, because it’s already nearly six, and then soon it will be dinner and then, oh God, it’s the – how do they bill it? ‘Viva America Ball’, yes that’s it. Well. I have nine things I could wear to that, and soon I’m just going to have to excuse myself from this little gathering because deciding quite which, as you well might imagine, is going to take me quite some time).

  Now I was, I confess, fairly encouraged by the sight of one or two things when first I glanced at the Daily Programme. There is a crossword every morning, apparently, as well as a brain-teaser competition (love that word) available from the library, wherever the library might be – but then someone told me there aren’t any proper prizes, so that was no good. So what else was on offer? Something called ‘Body Sculpt’ at the fitness centre (oh dear) and this could, if you had the inclination, be followed by a lecture on bridge and a lecture on computers! Not really me, I thought. Hm? What do you think? No – we’re agreed, then: not at all me. ‘Beginner’s Backgammon’ (no prizes) rather fell into a similar category, as did the ‘Ladies Table Tennis Open Play’ – not to say the (oh please) ‘Golf Putting Clinic’. And did I want to attend a talk on the sinking of the Titanic? I did not. Didn’t want Yoga or the dance class and I certainly had no wish to be even the tiniest bit involved in the ‘Transylvania Heritage Trail’, that was for absolute sure. Shuffleboard? Not. Whist? Uh-uh. Charlene at one point more or less opined that she’d a mind to attend the ‘Firming, Toning and Inch Loss Seminar’ and maybe I’d like to tag along? But then again, Charlene – maybe not, hm? And the same went for something called ‘Body Fat Blues’ – oh God don’t even ask: why don’t these people just stop eating all the time if they’re so distressed by the truth that they look like pigs? (And was I silly, actually, to think that as a Competition Winner they would – I don’t know … lay on special things? Maybe that’s silly. I don’t know. Don’t see why …)

  So, you might ask – well, Nicole, you might think of going: we’ve heard in great detail about all the things you didn’t do today, so do tell us, please (we’re all agog), how in fact you have filled in your time since early this morning? Well: I did try to catch up with Marianne at several points, but we haven’t coincided. Rollo’s phone seems to be either not working or else off the hook, some reason. And David … well. He said to me, I thought I might look in to the Black Horse – maybe Dwight’s there: fancy it? I just looked at him. No, David, I eventually came out with – I don’t, as you so horribly and typically put it, fancy it one tiny little fraction. Have I ever, David – have I ever in living memory fancied entering a pub at any point of the night or day, either in London or the country – let alone in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean? But oh God please do by all means look in, won’t you, to the Black, Jesus – Horse – oh yes please do, David, look in – and keep on looking in until you can’t bloody see any more, yes? As per bloody usual.

  And after I’d given him up as a very bad job (not, I need hardly tell you, for the first time, this) I went along to the Steiner Salon on is it number One Deck and booked up hair and facials morning and evening for the whole of the trip (my second of the day is actually due pretty much now) and then I finally did, I’m delighted to be able to tell you, make one or two rather, well – exciting, I suppose, discoveries. There’s something they call a ‘Daily Tote’ – it’s really quite simple. All you have to do is guess the ship’s mileage from sailing until noon today – and so on every day, I suppose it goes. It’s only two dollars per bet, and if no one gets it right there’s a rollover, you see, which is always rather thrilling. Also – a bit rather better – there’s what they call ‘Snowball Bonanza Bingo’, and what you do is you trot along to the Great Lounge at four-thirty (and yes I did go, of course I did – why I was a little bit late for this tea, as it happens) and you pay twenty dollars for, um – three chances for five games, I think they said – still a bit hazy – but the main point here is that the jackpot starts at five hundred dollars (I know!) and it sort of snowballs every day (not quite sure exactly how this … you know: the nuts and bolts) and then by the time we get to New York, some lucky person scoops the lot! And that oily and grinning official-type person … Assistant something or other, he kept on saying to me (God – as if I cared) – anyway he, whoever he is, was telling me that the final payout reaches thousands. Well. I just have to make sure that the lucky person is me.

  The best thing, though, was just before lunch. In the Casino. I know! I wasn’t aware there would be such a thing – never even crossed my mind. I’ve never set foot in one before, I have to say (those you see in films are either, aren’t they, awfully seedy or else madly glitzy and rather too plushily vulgar), so I was, I suppose, just very slightly nervous of quite what I’d find. But I needn’t have been at all, as it turned out – it’s all very easy, very friendly. But just before lunch – that’s what I was saying – they were sort of teaching you, really: Blackjack, Poker, Roulette … even the words are terribly thrilling and naughty, don’t you think so? And the tables, you know, are open at eleven every morning – go on right through the day. There are lots of those rather awful and clanking slot machines too, of course (they’re not still called one-armed bandits, are they?) but I think that that side of things is just a little bit seaside pier, if you know what I mean. The sorts of things in the places David seems to like going to, yes? So I think the tables are rather more me. And from what I’ve picked up, it’s all really quite straightforward. Roulette, well – you just bet on a number or black or red or a combination of both, is all it really seemed to be. Blackjack I can maybe get the hang of. Poker, I have to say, might be a teeny bit trickier because I think it involves a fair deal of remembering and adding up numbers and so forth – and the other thing, if I’m honest, is that I’d just be so hopeless at the famous ‘poker face’ – I really think I couldn’t pull it off. When I’m losing, you see – when my number just won’t come up – it really is for me very, uh … bad. Bad isn’t really close to how it takes me, but I have no words. If I get a run of entering a lot of competitions at home and all I get after months and months is a terrible zero (or – almost worse – a handful of practically worthless tokens for some or other awful product that I’ve already got stacks and stacks of, double-banked and stripped of all identity, filling up cupboards and boxes) then what I feel is lower, far lower than even the threshold of alive, and worse – much, much worse – than if I wer
e facing death itself. On the other hand …! When I’m winning … when all I’m doing is scooping it in …! When those letters arrive that kick off with the great big word Congratulations! printed in red … when those funny little people come around with their official briefcases stuffed with formal declarations of victory …! That is … oh goodness – if only I had the words! Some people say – well, what they used to say is that something so great as that is the very best thing since sliced bread – didn’t they? Or are they being funny? And now they say – I’ve heard it sometimes, maybe on television – that so-and-so, some great high, some great wondrous hit or another – that it is better than sex. Well – equally silly, to my mind. Loads of things are better than that – in fact, let’s face it: anything on earth you care to name. But that is just my personal view and could, I admit, be coloured by having been married to David for all these long years (not really that many, but seemingly countless). Mm. So anyway – Casino, yes? I think I’ll probably maybe look in there. Time to time. Who knows?

  And what’s this now? Ah – it’s the Pat girl talking. I really do think I have to make my excuses very shortly, but I don’t after all wish to appear in any way rude, so I’ll just hear out what it is she has to say: she is maybe going to tell us once more how she is feeling – how did she put it? ‘A bit not right’ – not (she might then go on to qualify yet once again) exactly ill, or anything, but just a bit … you know.

  ‘Doesn’t anyone else feel it, then? The movement? It can’t just be me, can it?’ asked Pat of the company, while lowering her cup (the tea was cold: she had tried to drink it often).

  ‘Waaaaall …’ drawled Charlene (Nicole felt rather sure that this could well be ushering in a further round of own-brand opining, here). ‘Tell you truth, Patty – I been on this tub so dang long, I can’t hardly remember it goes no other way. Maybe we get to New York and then I got trouble, huh?’